your fingers taking hold of something vulnerable — yank, it’s gone. And you are in the dark. And you’re alone, but it feels like something has been done to you and is continuing to be done, as if you have been tricked. As if you are a big stupid animal who’s been led into a trap. So the only way you can think to get out of the trap is to chase down the guy who led you there in the first place.
And Kirsten wrote, Rank in all seriousness wtf?
And I said OMG you just wrote WTF. What are you, fourteen?
And she said IMHO, OMG is worse than WTF.
And I said, Do you mean because G is worse than F?
And she said G, as you know, is great.
And I said, F is pretty great too.
Ha ha, said Kirsten. I mean LOL.
RAOTFL, I said.
E2&ITCYP9, she wrote back. I just made that one up. My kids say you can’t do that. It’s a very lockstep sort of place, the internet.
Like religion, is what I wanted to reply. But stopped myself. We hadn’t broached this yet — where exactly Kirsten stood on the whole Lord Jesus thing lately. There was that offhand G is great remark, but I had no idea how to take it. It could be anything from a fervent avowal to a smirking reference to our holy-roller past. This led me to remember that the problem with Kirsten and I back in the day is that we were basically incapable of having a serious conversation. We could talk about God, because that was sort of required — and, looking back on it, just another way of avoiding what was really going on — but the minute we tried to talk about each other, or our lives, or how we felt, we’d start joking around and never could quite get down to it. We entertained each other too much — it was always more fun to exchange quips than to dig into what was going on. She asked me once how I met Beth, for example, and I gave her the sitcom version. There I am in the bar when this fat, excessively bangled lady twice my age, who I can only assume is looking for some hot young meat, heaves herself into my booth and I decide in all my drunken beneficence to go for it and even try to buy her a drink. (Beth! Kirsten had screamed, dying. You tried to buy BETH a DRINK?) But I told her nothing about how the booth shook, how I gulped and sweated, how Beth’s eyes were like a scalpel down my chest. Kirsten knew this was my conversion experience, and therefore the most important thing to ever happen to me, but she never insisted on hearing any version other than the joke. Anything else made us both uncomfortable.
And I’m noticing that pattern emerging again already, and it’s great, don’t get me wrong, it’s as fun as it ever was but I also don’t want to lose sight of the way it eventually sunk us. So before I replied to her lockstep note I sat and thought for quite a while.
And I wrote, So. I have told you about my irrational obsession. What about you? What kind of pointless bullshit is needlessly consuming all your time and emotional energy these days?
And she wrote back five seconds later, practically: I have kids, Rank. I’m not permitted pointless bullshit anymore.
Which was when I thought: For Christ’s sake next year I’ll be a forty-year-old man.
And I wrote, I would like to call you, Kirsten.
26
08/13/09, 11:22 p.m.
HEREWITH BEGINS OUR HERO'S life of crime, which is not really much of a crime-life at all since it consists basically of driving around with Ivor in a mud-coloured Dodge Aries making “drop-offs” and “pick-ups.” Ivor, on Richard’s instructions, doesn’t even let Rank drive. Richard is perhaps the most cautious son of a bitch Rank has ever encountered. Rank is asked to do nothing but accompany Ivor — to climb into Ivor’s barn-smelling K-car on departure, and out of it on arrival, at which point Rank follows Ivor into the abysmal apartment block or dilapidated household where business is being done. Glamour! Intrigue! Once inside, Rank stands there so that everyone present can get a good look at him before Ivor suggests to the host or hostess that they adjourn to another room to do business. Rank is not invited to come along at this point. Rank is instructed to